1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910788595503321

Autore

Bryant Rebecca, Dr.

Titolo

The past in pieces [[electronic resource] ] : belonging in the new Cyprus / / Rebecca Bryant

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Philadelphia, : University of Pennsylvania Press, c2010

ISBN

1-283-89659-1

0-8122-0666-5

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (218 p.)

Collana

Contemporary Ethnography

Disciplina

956.9304

Soggetti

Nationalism - Cyprus

Turks - Cyprus - Ethnic identity

Greeks - Cyprus - Ethnic identity

Cyprus History

Cyprus Ethnic relations

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references (p. [199]-205).

Nota di contenuto

Front matter -- Contents -- The Sorrow of Unanswered Questions -- Introduction. A Prelude to Mourning -- One: Paths of No Return -- Two: The Anxieties of an Opening -- Three: A Needle and a Handkerchief -- Four: Geographies of Loss -- Five: In the Ruins of Memory -- Six: The Spoils of History -- Seven: The Pieces of Peace -- Eight: Betrayals of the Past -- Reading the Future (In Lieu of a Conclusion) -- Notes -- Main Sources and Suggestions for Further Reading -- Acknowledgments

Sommario/riassunto

On April 23, 2003, to the surprise of much of the world, the ceasefire line that divides Cyprus opened. The line had partitioned the island since 1974, and so international media heralded the opening of the checkpoints as a historic event that echoed the fall of the Berlin Wall. As in the moment of the Wall's collapse, cameras captured the rush of Cypriots across the border to visit homes unwillingly abandoned three decades earlier. It was a euphoric moment, and one that led to expectations of reunification. But within a year Greek Cypriots overwhelmingly rejected at referendum a United Nations plan to reunite the island, despite their Turkish compatriots' support for the plan. In



The Past in Pieces, anthropologist Rebecca Bryant explores why the momentous event of the opening has not led Cyprus any closer to reunification, and indeed in many ways has driven the two communities of the island further apart. This chronicle of the "new Cyprus" tells the story of the opening through the voices and lives of the people of one town that has experienced conflict. Over the course of two years, Bryant studied a formerly mixed town in northern Cyprus in order to understand both experiences of life together before conflict and the ways in which the dissolution of that shared life is remembered today. Tales of violation and loss return from the past to shape meanings of the opening in daily life, redefining the ways in which Cypriots describe their own senses of belonging and expectations of the political future. By examining the ways the past is rewritten in the present, Bryant shows how even a momentous opening may lead not to reconciliation but instead to the discovery of new borders that may, in fact, be the real ones.